anxiety

anxiety

For some youngsters, a toy spider is frightening. For others, it’s simply a funny-looking plaything. Why some kids squeal with delight and others with trepidation is what Koraly Perez-Edgar, a researcher in Penn State’s Department of Psychology, is hoping to tap into. Her research team is working with a German technology firm to build an eye-tracking visor that will capture eye gaze information that could lead to a better understanding of anxiety disorders in children.

Jamie Tworkowski, founder of To Write Love on Her Arms (TWLOHA), will discuss the non-profit and its mission when he kicks off the 2014-15 Speaker Series at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, on Monday, Nov. 17. The program, which begins at 7:30 p.m. in the McGarvey Commons of the college’s Reed Union Building, is free and open to the public.

Koraly Pérez-Edgar's work over the years has demonstrated that extreme shyness observed in children is often a predictor of anxiety later in life. She says that the way shy children behave will evolve as they grow up, "but they can remain uncomfortable in their own skin in new social situations." Pérez-Edgar runs the University's Cognition, Affect, and Temperament Lab.

A new method for studying the role of a critical neurotransmitter in disorders such as epilepsy, anxiety, insomnia, depression, schizophrenia, and alcohol addiction could help create safer and more efficient drugs for treating those conditions. A group of scientists led by Gong Chen, associate professor of biology at Penn State, has created the new method by molecularly engineering a model synapse--a structure through which a nerve cell sends signals to another cell.

Did you know that nearly 2.4 million Americans suffer from panic disorders, according to the National Institute of Mental Health? In fact, more than 20 percent of adult Americans will have at least one panic attack in their lifetime and up to 4 percent of adults suffer from panic disorders. Panic disorders are two to three times more common in women than men.

For any student, going away to college and encountering new academic and social pressures can be a challenging experience. For some, those challenges, as well as pre-existing conditions, can result in issues that need the attention of qualified mental health experts. Dennis Heitzmann, director of the Center for Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) at Penn State's University Park campus and an expert in college student mental health issues, said that the preponderance of students his center sees are dealing with anxiety and depression, but that each client is dealing with a unique situation.

Students experiencing anxiety and stress as finals draw near can get help from iStudy for Success! iStudy is a collection of skill-building modules that students can import into an ANGEL group they have created.

Writer Ernest Hemingway dodged bullets as a war correspondent, fought bulls in Spain, and hunted big game in Africa-but when asked to name the scariest thing he ever encountered, he answered, "A blank sheet of paper."

For many of us, the symptoms of writer's block-staring at a blank computer screen or page with no clue how to begin, stomach clenching, throat tightening,-are all too familiar. But is our suffering a real syndrome or simply an excuse for being unproductive?